Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

Half A Million Kids:

Somewhere At 37,000 Feet Over The United States Of America

May 2, 2011

"I'm a farmer. I don't
know how to speak to twenty people at one time, let alone a crowd like
this. But I think you people have proven something to the world - not
only to the town of Bethel, or Sullivan county, or New York state:
you've proven something to the world. This is the largest group of
people ever assembled in one place.

We have had no idea that there would be this size group. And because
of that, you've had quite a few inconveniences as far as water, food,
and so forth. Your producers have done a mammoth job to see that
you're taken care of. They'd enjoy a vote of thanks.

But above that, the important thing that you've proven to the world is
that a half a million kids (and I call you kids because I have
children that are older than you are) ... a half million young people
can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing
but fun and music, and I
God
Bless You for it!"

...
Max Yasgur, host of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Bethel, New
York, USA - Sunday August 17, 1969

Some friends noticing there's been
half a million
views
say "Half a million people? That's incredible. That's
awesome! Can you
imagine
what half a million people would look like gathered in one place?

I tell them I really have no way of knowing (and
there's no software which has any way of knowing
either) if
half a million
views
equates to half a million people - a scenario which is
actually highly unlikely. A more plausible scenario is many of the
people who've visited the
Conversations For
Transformation
website over the past seven and a half years have revisited it on
more than one occasion. Not only that, but on each visit, they may
have viewed or re-viewed more than one essay - and each time
an essay is viewed it increments the
view
count
by one.

Then they'll kind of like take me behind the barn and
tell me "But you don't have to actually say that,
Laurence. You can leave it unsaid. You can leave it as an
implication. You can leave the innuendo of
half a million
viewsasif it's half a million people. Can
you
imagine
a group of people that size engaging in
Conversations For
Transformation?
That's huge!".

What exactly does
half a million
views
represent? Firstly, it's not an absolutely 100% perfectly accurate
count. Secondly, in making mid-flight corrections from
time to time, I've intentionally low balled it.

I've made one other good faith adjustment to the total
view count,
a decrement rather than an increment. Here's why: in the
beginning I couldn't figure out how to stop the
view count
incrementing when I loaded the
Conversations For
Transformation
website. I speculated, as a matter of integrity, all visitors should
increment the
view count
... except me. Then one day in an epiphany I came up with
a
stoopid
simple
way to stop the
view count
incrementing for me. After implementing this fix I
decremented the
view count
by my estimation of the total of my visits before then. This is the
only other adjustment I've made to the
view count
affecting its absolute 100% perfect accuracy.